Bishop Foley High School's Team 910, which was on the alliance that took top honors in FIRST Robotics competition at Kettering University March 1-2. Photo by Kaitlyn Chornoby

Bishop Foley Catholic High School's Team 910 won a gold medal as part of the winning alliance at the FIRST competition at Kettering University in Flint during the weekend.

Rochester High School's robotics team came close to winning at the FIRST competition in Traverse City. But the alliance made up of teams from Fremont, Niles and Manistique took the gold medal at that meet.

The next regional competitions in preparation for the state championships are Friday and Saturday, March 8-9 at Waterford Kettering High School and Gull Lake High School in Gull Lake.

Bishop Foley in Madison Heights was on the winning alliance with teams from Goodrich and Canton. Foley also was honored with the Imagery Award at the Kettering University event.

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Other local teams winning awards at the Kettering event in Flint were Ortonville Team 68 that took the regional chairman's award and the Industrial Safety Award; Grand Blanc, Excellence in Engineering Award.

The Kettering event also hosted Lake Orion Team 302, Warren Team 818, and North Oakland County Team 1506.

At the Traverse City event, the Rochester Team 201 was in an alliance with Utica Community Schools Team 217 and Houghton Team 857.

"A first week district event reveals every team's flaws, especially those related to the robot," wrote student reporters Sanjana Murali, from Dwight D. Eisenhower High School, and Shivani Patel, Utica High School.

"The challenge is in pulling through and fixing the flaws, and the (Rochester Team 201) didn't waste any time making those fixes throughout the Traverse City District event."

Mentor Alan Wareham said: "We spent the weekend making adjustments to the robot based on the performance we were seeing on the field."

Also at the Traverse City competition, the Berkley Team 247 won the Entrepreneurship Award; and Sterling Heights Team 217 that took the Gracious Professionalism Award.

Detroit Country Day School Team 835 also competed in Traverse City.

The two competitions were the first of a series of meets for FIRST Robotic teams following a six-week build period.

In the 2013 season game, Ultimate Ascent, teams in alliances of three robots compete to score as many flying discs into goals as they can during a two-minute and fifteen-second match. The goals are located at three different heights with varying points associated to them, ranging from 1 point to 5 points.

The robots also are challenged to engineer a climbing mechanism to scale a pyramid formation in the center of the field.

Student reporters Murali and Patel said this year's games includes shooting Frisbees during the tele-operated and autonomous periods of competition.